Page 85 of The Game

He glances at me as I rest against the countertop next to him.

“A bad call,” I add.

“Ah,” he says. “Work related?”

A long sigh seeps out. “When I was a young hopeful in Russia, I attended a lot of tennis camps. It’s a strange situation. All the training in Russia is run by this guy named …”

“Konstantin Lebedev,” he says, and my mouth drops open as I stare up at him.

“How do you know that?” My hand flaps. He’s been looking into me? Into this?Jesus Christ.My veins turn to ice. What does he know?

“Fabian came across him when he was digging into Maroz,” he says, pursing his lips, oblivious to my internal meltdown.

Okay.Okay. I let out a long, controlled breath, but my heart is still thumping in my chest. How thorough is this Fabian guy? How much did he find out? I pace over to look out of the window. Adam or this Fabian guy could blackmail me.No. No, Anna. Don’t be a lunatic.

When I turn around, Adam is watching me quietly with a soft expression on his face. “Anna. There’s no obligation to say anything about your life or your past, to anyone.”

“How much do you know?”

“Very little for certain. Fabian had some questions about it, but I didn’t ask him to dig any deeper.”

I sink down on the couch and put my head in my hands.

The seat indents beside me as Adam sits down. He places a warm arm over my shoulders and pulls me into him, kissing the top of my head. “You’resafe with me. You know that, right?”

“Konstantin has asked me to go to Russia to coach,” I mumble, and when I say it out loud it sounds so innocuous.

“What, permanently?”

I shake my head. “This weekend. He’s invited some of his associates”—I shiver at the word—“to a tennis tournament. They’ll be important people he wants to impress. VIPs in Russia.”

Adam doesn’t say anything, but just runs his hand up and down my back, and I turn my head toward him.

“We don’t talk about this ever.”

“Talk about what?”

“What happened to us.”

He inclines his head. “You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to, but I’m happy to listen.” His hand is still running up and down my back.

How fast has Adam Miller become my safe port in a storm? There’s no one else I trust like him, and as soon as the thought flits through my mind, my stomach drops out. My whole life and so few trustworthy friends. But if he’s found out some of it, I should tell him all of it. I don’t know what to do about this supposed invite, or what it all means, but perhaps he or Fabian could help. I suck in a deep breath.

“Konstantin Lebedev has legitimate business interests in Russia, but he has illegitimate ones, too. The tennis clubs are real but also a front. He uses the young people who come into his academies in other ways, especially if they’re not going to make it in tennis. Or maybe it’s so rare to make it to the top, that it’s all a pretense anyway. A lot of shady characters act as so-called sponsors in his tennis clubs.”

“Is Pietr Petrov one of those characters?”

Of course he knows Pietr by name. I talked about that relationship, but I never told Adam the whole story, but I guess it’s easy enough to put two and two together. “Yes. But …” I sigh. “For me, he was a better option than Konstantin to be close to.” I pick some hard skin off the finger where it fits around my racket. “I thought he was looking out for me,” I whisper.

“Christ, Anna. What did he do? How did he look out for you, exactly?” Adam stands and walks across the small space to the windows.

And I don’t want to answer those questions. “I’m not sure why Konstantin let Pietr have me. There was something between them that I never understood.”

“Have you?” His shoulders hunch as he stares out of the window, his face reflected in the glass.

For a second, I can hardly breathe or open my mouth. “It was all consensual.” It comes out choked, and I have to cough to clear my throat. “That’s what makes it worse. It’s implicit that, if you want to progress in the tennis academy, sponsors are a part of it. The worst of it is that the young girls are eager. They know that, if they want to get out of Russia, have any kind of opportunities, then they have to have a sponsor and keep him happy.” My hand shakes as I bring it to my lips. How can I say the next words I need to say? “I was a prostitute, basically.”

He turns around and walks back to where I’m sitting, settling back down and putting his arm around me again. “It’s appalling that these men think they can ‘have you,’ Anna, but please don’t think of it as prostitution. You were coerced at best. You did what you had to do. You muddled through in a desperate situation. You should congratulate yourself on being brave enough to do it. To make a difficult choice when all the choices were bad.”

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